As has been noted in the preceding division of this chapter, the references to the more noteworthy of the manuscript-dealers in France occur almost entirely in connection with sales made by them to the members of the Royal Family, to the Dukes of Burgundy, or to other of the great nobles. The beautifully illuminated manuscript which carried the coat-of-arms or the crest of the noble for whom it was made, included also, as a rule, the inscription of the manuscript-dealer by whom the work of its preparation had been carried on or supervised, and through whom it had been sold to the noble purchaser. Of the manuscripts of this class, the record in Germany is very much smaller. Germany also did not share the advantages possessed by Italy, of close relations with the literature and the manuscript stores of the East, relations which proved such an important and continued source of inspiration for the intellectual life of the Italian scholars. The influence of the revival of the knowledge of Greek literature came to Germany slowly through its relations with Italy, but in the knowledge of Greek learning and literature the German scholars were many years behind their Italian contemporaries, while the possession of Greek manuscripts in Germany was, before the middle of the fifteenth century, very exceptional indeed. The scholarship of the earlier German universities appears also to have been narrower in its range and more restricted in its cultivation than that which had been developed in Paris, in Bologna, or in Padua. The membership of the Universities of Prague and of Vienna, the two oldest in the German list, was evidently restricted almost entirely to Germans, Bohemians, Hungarians, etc., that is to say, to the races immediately controlled by the German Empire. If a scholar of England were seeking, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, special instruction or special literary and scholarly advantages, his steps were naturally directed towards Paris for theology, Bologna for jurisprudence, and Padua for medicine, and but few of these travelling English scholars appear to have taken themselves to Prague, Vienna, or Heidelberg. In like manner, if English book collectors were seeking manuscripts, they betook themselves to the dealers in Paris, in Florence, or in Venice, and it was not until after the manuscript-trade had been replaced by the trade in the productions of the printing-press that the German cities can be said to have become centres for the distribution of literature.